How St. John’s men’s basketball responds to rancid UConn loss will define their season

There is no sugar-coating it: St. John’s got their behinds kicked against UConn.

The readers of this site are already well-aware of the grotesque details of Wednesday night’s 72-40 clubbing, and the inescapable tomato flinging from normally college basketball-agnostic sports media outlets for their efforts affirmed that, but what’s done is done and memories from this rout will linger until the ball tips off again versus Villanova.

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Shooting 19.7% from the field and missing 24 consecutive shots to end the game implies that Wednesday night’s shooting performance was such a fluke that there is no use taking away anything from the beating other than that they need to make more shots, and the best course of action is to forget it ever happened.

However, St. John’s didn’t reap the success of these last few seasons by simply burning the game film from gutting losses and not taking the correct lessons from their setbacks.

Back in 2024, when St. John’s blew a 19-point first-half lead to Seton Hall to lose their eighth contest in ten games, Rick Pitino declared the team was slow laterally and that season was the most miserable experience of his coaching career. While those soundbites drew the ire and mocking of the college basketball world, that moment galvanized the Johnnies.

The 2023-24 Red Storm won their next six games and even got their revenge on the Pirates in the Big East Tournament. Even though they eventually missed the Big Dance, St. John’s finished their season on a high note, playing their best basketball to close the campaign by averaging 89 points per game in the seven games following Pitino’s infamous post-game press conference.

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In the following season, it took three narrow losses against Baylor, Georgia, and Creighton for St. John’s to become one of the most clutch teams in college basketball, ultimately winning 31 games in which they came back from double-digit deficits on several occasions, and securing their first Big East…

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Publish date : 2026-02-27 21:55:00

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